The Institute for Organisational and Worklife Ethics

Whenever people come together in groups, ethical issues arise concerning our life and our work, and individual and common welfare. Ethical issues are therefore not only intellectual conundrums – they require a commitment and a love of life and people. This is also true of research into ethics.

An analytical approach is a basic requirement for all academic activity. This means that we endeavour to be precise and achieve a general view while maintaining a critical distance to various positions – including our own.

The work on applied ethics must also be constructive. Studies and projects should result in robust proposals and recommendations.

The institute also has a communicative ambition, an openness to other researchers and debaters. It must be possible for different directions and approaches to be reflected in activities here. We must also actively convey knowledge and research findings, and participate in public debate.

Research domains

The Institute for Organisational and Worklife Ethics analyses human organisation from an ethical perspective. There is differentiation here between commercial organisations (private, cooperative, government-owned and municipal companies), and public administration, political and civil society organisations. Within these four areas there is a need to draw attention to value-related contemporary trends and make them visible and comprehensible. A number of studies at the institute also include elements of external analysis, with a focus on describing and analysing significant contemporary phenomena from an ethical perspective.

Worklife conditions in a broad sense are an important element in organisational ethics. In order to stress the importance of these issues, the term worklife ethics appears in the institute’s name.

The research topics – in the form of individual studies and more extensive projects – that we introduce must be of importance to various organisations but also/or subjects of current public debate. Once at full strength, the institute will work with all four areas.

Senast uppdaterad: 2017-04-05.

The Institute for Organisational and Worklife Ethics was founded in the year 2007. The Institute is a research unit within Ersta Sköndal Bräcke University College.